1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cassette for pathological tissue examination and, more particularly, to such cassette which can improve the workability or efficiency of making preparations for microscopy including taking-in of a medical sample such as of a living body tissue and chemical treatment thereof at the same time helping improve the efficiency and reliability of such examination.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Today, in the diagnosis of cancer et cetera the method of histologically examining tissue samples taken from a living body, the so-called biopsy is widely used. In such a biopsy, for example, a sample of approximately 0.5-5 mm of the object living body tissue is taken, rinsed with water, treated with xylene after dehydration with alcohol and then embedded in paraffin, and it is sliced to make preparations for microscopic examination.
Hitherto, as container for such a tissue sample, a cloth bag made of a chemical-resistant fiber, some 4.5 cm long and 6.5 cm wide and approximately 0.2 mm in mesh size was used, a tissue sample was taken in and the mouth of the bag was closed before the aforementioned treatment was proceeded with. This method is, however, extremely poor in workability and, especially when a fraction of the sample is in a corner or the bottom of the bag, it is by no means easy to take it out using a pair of pincers. Further, while in biopsy it is usually the case that, even if the object organ is one, several samples of living body tissue are taken from different parts of the organ, the method described above using a mesh bag lacks marking means, hence when several samples are taken into a bag, they are indistinguishable, and the method being used in practice nowadays is to take each sample into one bag together with a card or the like with the name et cetera of the examinee written thereon, being thus dreadfully inefficient. Also, in such a method, if the aforementioned card or the like should come out of the bag, the examinee is no longer identifiable and other necessary data, if any, are lost, this greatly interferes with the reliability of the examination, and, worse, a separate container having through-holes therein, the so-called cassette, is required when the living body tissue is embedded in paraffin for making preparations for microscopy. There are also many other problems such as the possibility of the taken sample being deformed when the bag is subjected to a even a small force.